I shook my head. “Well,” said he, “it is a solemn end, and she was a wilful lady. Do you know, Miss Tremayne, if she has any relations living?—they should be sent for.”
“I know of none. A person of distinction, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, sometimes visited her. We had better send for her solicitor.”
Some other conversation took place, which I hardly noticed. The body was adjusted on the couch, we left the room, and the door was locked. As I walked quietly, almost stealthily, home, I felt stunned. Health and mortality, death and life, seemed so fearfully jumbled together, that I almost doubted whether I was not traversing a city of spirits.
My Achates stared at me when I described to him the late occurrences.
“So you have at length discovered him?” said he.
“I have—a voice almost from the grave has imparted to me all that I wished to know—and something more. I have sprung from a beautiful race—but we must not speak ill of kith and kin, must we, Pigtop?”
“For certain not. And, so your father actually did send that old lord to look after you at your return from the West Indies. Well, that shows some affection for you, at all events.”
“The fruits of which affection Daunton is, no doubt, now reaping.”
“Well, let us go and cut his throat, or rather, turn him over to the hangman.”
“No, Pigtop; I have promised his mother that I will not attempt his life.”